Focusrite RedNet Components Employed at Valencia College’s New Film Production and Sound Technology Building

Six world-class recording, mixing, mastering and film-sound studios, all linked via Dante™ infrastructure and RedNet interfaces, prepare Valencia College’s students for an AoIP-centric future in audio production

Sixty-eight RedNet units constitute what is now the single largest educational RedNet installation in the world at Valencia College

Los Angeles, CA – Valencia College, in Orlando, Florida, recently deployed the world’s largest educational installation of Focusrite’s RedNet range of Dante™-networked audio converters and interfaces. The infrastructure is composed of no fewer than 68 RedNet units, installed in the college’s new Film Production and Sound Technology Building, which opened for classes last fall.

The new building, which is home to Valencia College’s Sound & Music Technology program, houses six world-class studio facilities: two full tracking suites with control rooms, two mix studios, a mastering studio and a film-sound studio, which is one of three Dolby Atmos®-certified mix facilities at the school. The technology offered by the facility assures that graduates of the Sound & Music Technology program will prosper in a professional audio industry that will have a networked-audio infrastructure as its future foundation. The RedNet systems were installed and integrated by AV systems integrator LMG, an Entertainment Technology Partners company.

“The entire facility is connected through RedNet,” says Joe McBride, Teaching Lab Supervisor in Valencia College’s Sound & Music Technology program. “RedNet provides us with a complete, Dante-ready networked-audio ecosystem. RedNet gives us the most flexible system imaginable for connecting all of our studios and the systems in them.”

For instance, the RedNet AM2 stereo audio monitoring units that are in every studio not only allow those in each room to receive their own custom headphone mixes, but the networked units enable those mixes to be sent to headphones in other studios, allowing multiple rooms to be used simultaneously. RedNet A16R 16-channel analogue I/O interfaces and RedNet D16R 16-channel AES3 I/O’s allow both digital and analogue signals to be seamlessly networked throughout the facility, and RedNet HD32R 32-channel HD Dante network bridges allow all of the facility’s Pro Tools systems to interface from studio to studio.

“The main focus here is to prepare our students for what the real world is going to be like, and the pro audio industry is transitioning to a fully networked workflow,” says McBride. “RedNet gave us not only an incredibly efficient and effective networking solution for the entire new Film Production and Sound Technology Building, but it also provides the networked infrastructure for them to learn on that will ready them for the jobs they’ll find when they graduate. That’s why RedNet was really the only right choice to make.”

Focusrite gear setup at Valencia College:

68 Focusrite RedNet units in total, including:

RedNet AM2 stereo audio monitoring in every studio, allowing the networking of custom headphone mixes across the facility’s different rooms